Which women’s college basketball games, teams and conferences will have the most impact on the rest of 2021-22?

We have arrived at the unofficial beginning of phase two of the 2021-22 women’s college basketball season. January always marks the beginning of conference play, and a sense of urgency begins to set in. Yes, a few leagues scattered some games in November and December, but from here, the schedule consists almost exclusively of conference games. A team can survive a couple of bad weekends around Thanksgiving. But a poor two-week stretch in mid-January or early February might doom a team’s optimal seeding or even a shot at the NCAA tournament.

The college basketball calendar is predictable in that way. Teams, conferences and fans depend on it, and coaches plan for it. But COVID-19 continues to bring uncertainty, and the rest of the season could look a lot like last year. So whatever most programs used as the blueprint in 2021, let’s hope they saved for 2022.

With the omicron variant causing a rise in positive tests across the country, games are getting canceled or postponed at a concerning rate. Fortunately, most conferences recently elected to amend their policies on games impacted by COVID-19, and the plan is to reschedule rather than assign forfeits for league competition. That good news, however, is tempered by the fact that the clock is ticking. Each postponement means one fewer day to complete a full schedule.

The NCAA requires that each team plays 25 games to be eligible for the tournament. Last year that number was amended to 13 to account for a truncated season. As of now, there is no word that any change will be made for 2021-22. But it’s worth keeping an eye on because teams that had to cancel multiple nonconference games will need to play nearly all their conference schedule to reach 25.

At this point, no teams are projected to be in jeopardy, but monitoring how many games continue to get pushed back will be important. UConn, for example,…